The Year of Hermeneutical Equity

Last year, I set a somewhat audacious goal for myself: read 100 books in a year. I wasn’t entirely sure I’d get there—but by the time December rolled around, I had read 104. It ended up being more than a numbers game. It reshaped my attention, stretched my imagination, and reminded me just how formative sustained reading can be. 

This year, I’ve set a different kind of goal. Not primarily numerical, but intentional: 90% of what I read will be written by women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ voices. 

As a white, straight, cisgender man, I’m increasingly aware that the voices most readily available to me—the ones centered, platformed, and normalized—tend to look a lot like mine. That’s not purely accidental; it’s the result of long-standing patterns of power and privilege. Those voices aren’t without value—but they are overrepresented. 

I’ve come to think of this as a matter of hermeneutical equity. If interpretation—of Scripture, of the world, of God—is always shaped by lived experience, then whose experiences we listen to matters. It’s not just about inclusion; it’s about clarity. There are things I simply won’t see unless someone else helps me see them. And already this year, that commitment is changing me. 

Kathryn Tanner’s The Politics of God has pushed me to reconsider how theology speaks to structures of power, not just individual belief. It’s a reminder that doctrine is never abstract—it always has political implications. 

Don Lemon’s This Is the Fire is personal and urgent, naming the lived realities of racism with a clarity that refuses to let readers remain distant or detached. 

April Ajoy’s Star-Spangled Jesus hit closer to home than I expected. Ajoy offers a compelling disentangling of faith from Christian nationalism—honest, accessible, and pastorally aware in a way that resonates deeply in this moment.

Lakisha Lockhart-Rusch’s Doing Theological Double Dutch is just plain brilliant—playful and rigorous at the same time. It expands what theological pedagogy can be and invites a kind of joy that often feels absent in academic work. 

Jacqueline Lapsley’s Whispering the Word changed how I hear familiar texts. opened up the Old Testament through women’s voices and experiences, revealing layers of the text that are too often overlooked. 

Jon Sobrino’s Principle of Mercy continues to haunt me in the best way—centering the crucified peoples of history and insisting that theology must begin there if it is to be faithful. It pressed on my instincts—especially the tendency to keep theology at a comfortable distance from real suffering. 

 

Katherine Sonderegger’s Systematic Theology, Volume 2 took real effort for me to work through, but it was worth it. There’s a kind of reverence in her writing that drew me in.  It felt like doing theology as prayer... which is perhaps the only way anyone really does theology in the first place. 

Kelly Brown Douglas’s Stand Your Ground was one of the more unsettling reads so far. It forced me to see the myriad connections between theology and racialized violence. 

Heather Cox Richardson’s Democracy Awakening became almost a companion for me in trying to make sense of the present moment. I found myself thinking about it even when I wasn’t reading it—connecting dots in ways I hadn’t before. So deeply insightful and equally captivating.  

And Justin Sabia-Tanis’s Trans-Gendered didn’t just give me new ideas—it made me reflect on the kind of church I want to be part of shaping, and the kind of care I want to embody. 

The diversity here isn’t incidental—it’s the point. These voices don’t just add variety; they reshape the conversation. They challenge assumptions I didn’t even realize I was carrying. They deepen my sense of God, of the church, and of what faithfulness requires. If last year was about discipline, this year is about reorientation. It’s about recognizing that what we read forms us—and choosing, intentionally, to be formed by a wider, richer, more truthful communion of voices.

May I encourage you to go out of your way to move toward hermeneutical equity by being intentional in prioritizing voices that may be underrepresented in your own learning. g